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A Windsor Terrace Posse member believed to have replaced former drug kingpin Maurice “Papa Joe” Williams has been arrested and charged in federal court.

Columbus police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have charged Nkenley A. “Fresh” Elmore, 36, with federal counts of conspiracy to sell crack and cocaine, and drug and gun possession after a two-year investigation.

Officers arrested Elmore on Dec. 19. On Monday, a federal magistrate judge ordered him held without bond.

The criminal complaint against Elmore says he and his associates ran a large-scale, armed narcotics ring for more than a year in the South Linden neighborhood of Columbus. A search warrant says a federal source identified Elmore as the successor to Williams.

Williams was sentenced to 30 years in prison three years ago after a federal jury found him guilty of running a huge cocaine-trafficking enterprise with its roots in the Brittany Hills Posse, named after the subdivision east of South Linden and south of Mock Road. Federal prosecutors at the time said he’d been the biggest cocaine dealer in central Ohio for a decade and had a rock-star following in the neighborhood.

Elmore was in prison serving a five-year federal sentence for dealing cocaine during much of Williams’ reign. In 2011, three years after his release, Columbus police began investigating Elmore’s drug ties.

Officers kept an eye on numerous houses, apartments and other locations that Elmore used to store and sell drugs, the documents say, and found that Elmore operated at least two businesses, Certified Blocc Assassins LLC and CBA2 Trucking.

Two other men, Delmar A. Tucker, 36, and Robert M. Addison, 41, were charged on Dec. 18 as co-conspirators, according to federal criminal complaints. Their addresses were not available yesterday.

Attorneys involved with the cases could not be reached yesterday for comment.